The founding families of Bingtown, a prosperous trading city whose charter grants them exclusive rights to trade along the Rain Wild River in exchange for their ancestors' willingness to settle in a difficult and dangerous region. The Bingtown Traders are defined by their liveships - ships built from wizardwood that quicken into sentience when enough family members die aboard them - and by the complex obligations those ships create between family members across generations. The Liveship Traders Trilogy examines what happens when the economic and political foundations of Bingtown's prosperity are threatened simultaneously.